This character's pronounciation
is 'shou 4', its meaning, 'long life' (in printed character: Õ¯
), a goal in ancient China highly coveted. It is found very often as a
symbol of good wishes. The calligraphy in 'grass'-style (ts'ao 3 shu 1
- øó¨Ñ) was done by an artist of Guilin, located the mountainous
and picturesque landscape of southern China.

This
symbol representing a bronze ritual vessel comes from an inscription on
a sacrificial vessel cast on the occasion of the death of emperor Ling
(B.C. 545), dedicated to him by Chui, member of the imperial clan.

This
ancient symbol comes from a bronze vessel of 2nd dynasty representing
an early writing utensil, a kind of fountain pen: it was used to write
with on narrow strips of bamboo or small wooden plates. On top there used
to be a small reservoir for the liquid, probably a kind of black indian
ink. The bamboo shaft might have held a wick to regulate the ink flow.
Different to the writing brush used later, this 'fountain pen' produced
a regular width of stroke, thus forming the so-called 'seal' style of
writing.

"How do
I know, that love of life is not anything else than delusion? How do I
know, somebody afraid of death does not resemble a man far away from home
since young, and therefore not wanting to return? How do I know, that
the deceased do not regret their former greed for life? Those dreaming
of feasts may be weeping and lamenting the other day. Those dreaming of
weeping and wailing maybe go hunting next morning. While dreaming, they
do not know, that they are dreaming. In their dreams maybe they are interpreting
dreams. Only when awaken, it is getting through them, that they had been
dreaming. Gradually the big awakening is coming, and we then find out,
that life itself is a big dream. Meanwhile the fools believe to be awake;
hair-splittingly they make distinctions between princes and servants.
How foolish! Confucius and you, you both are in a dream. When saying,
that you are in a dream, I am in a dream myself."

But also in later centuries
the idea of earthly vanity experienced through the passing of time, the
limitation of life, ever had been present in the thinking of people. It
e.g. also was expressed with the lines of the so-called "Lan Ting" Prologue
('Orchid's pavilion'), said to be written by the great calligrapher Wang
Hsi-chih (in 353 A.D.):

"... Things
do change, only our feelings linger. What we used to be fond of will become
the past instantaneously. We can't help but to cheer ourselves by recollection.
Life, long or short, always comes to an end. An old saying has it that:
'Life and death are the ultimate things.' What a pain! Every time I read
about the writings of people from the past, I always sense their feeling
reflects my own. I can only lament but not know how to verbalize. Life
and death may be merely an illusion. Yet the concepts of longevity and
of short-lived are equally ridiculous. The future generations will look
upon us just like we do our past. So, I document the lives of the contemporaries
and their works. Time has changed, yet the desire to express our feeling
is the same. Those in the future shall get what I mean when they read
this article."(Transl.
from ancient chinese by Dr. Lee Siu-Leung - have a look at the whole
text and also his fine calligraphic lines !)

This is really touching!
And we deeply got it's meaning - as it met our own feeling so many more
centuries after these lines have been written! - and this also being the
very reason for these "Traces of Butterfly's Dreams" to be published on
the net.

Order and assessment of
those subjects may be different according to era and zeitgeist respective.
So e.g. the motif of love between man and woman - originally dealt with
in a natural and uninhibited way in the 'Book of Songs' (Shih Ching),
continuously was pushed into the background by the influence of Confucianism.
Although - beginning with about Sung dynasty - more and more hiding behind
harmless-ambiguous metaphors of nature, it never was driven out from chinese
poetry as a whole.

The copula 'and'
in English already is questionable and not at all correct as it seems
to refer to a plural of enumerated things stringed together or
listed, whereas in fact being a question of 'unity'

This was a buddhistic
line of thought, the so-called school of Mahayana (Sanskrit: 'the Big
Carriage) of Hua-yen under its teacher Fa-tsang (643-712 a.Chr.). In Neo-Confucianism
of the Sung-philosopher Chu Hsi Taoism and Buddhism were brought together
with the 'official' teaching of Confucius, a kind of state religion, thus
this outlook on life in chinese thinking certainly was further consolidated.

Maybe at the root of the
poem 'Die Aussicht'
(View) of the German poet Hölderlin, 'enraptured' from people, there
is a comparable view of nature? (The language of late Hölderlin with
its reduced vocabulary, using metaphors in a strange way 'empty' and 'depersonalized',
slightly reminds of the 'paleness of expression' highly appreciated mainly
in T'ang-poetry!)

Besides, the chinese expression
for 'nature' (tzu jan) has the meaning of something like 'growing/being
by itself' - comp. latin: 'natura' birth (fr. verb 'nacque' to be born)
here in the sense of 'reproducing itself' ...

In almost every case though
it is 'nature' in the sense of man-made landscape or seperate parts of
it, but more or less never 'wilderness' of which chinese people used to
have a feeling of unease (not considering it as a part of the 'middle'
- the 'centre' world in its proper meaning). One exception is landscape,
still in our days given the name of 'shan shui' (mountain and water):
an idealized combination of high mountain region, roaring cataracts and
lucent lakes, to great extent seeming almost artificial in its bizarre
'wildness': there the taoist sages were supposed to have their hermit's
refuge, trying to get to the bottom of the secrets of eternal youth, and
also the gods residing there.

In addition this personal
restraint also seems to be one cause for the chinese poets obviously having
pleasure with quotations. Unlike the western poets, afraid of being suspected
of plagiarism and anxious to be original, the chinese man of letter very
often almost revels in reciting the thoughts and aphorisms of others,
in order to pay due respect to the avant-garde thinkers, neglecting his
own 'insignificant' person (and at the same time demonstrating his own
wide knowledge of literature and artistic skill) ...

From this context arises
the question, if the poems have to rhyme - often asked, but nevertheless
hardly to be answered satisfying to everybody. Although basically being
a matter of taste, it is different, when it is not your own creation,
but when dealing with poetry done by others - and this always is the case,
when translating poetry from one language into another. Esteem and respect
toward the original and its creator - wherever it might be possible -
always require to follow the original rhyme patterns. With regard to the
chinese language's abundance of homophones and syllables sounding similar,
this goal seldom can be achieved with all lines in German translation.
Besides the end rhyme in chinese poetry there still are other numerous
poetical means, e.g. several 'parallelisms', that - due to the different
structures of language - only in some 'lucky' cases can be saved into
the german (western) translation.

In regard to this not
only the western reader might have difficulties, but even chinese people
well-experienced in writing, often do not cope with ancient texts. So
e.g. a chinese friend, well-educated in modern style, once lowly was reading
the characters of a stone inscription. When asked, what was the meaning
of this text, he answered with a disarming smile, that he was afraid not
knowing it either. (He certainly knew the character's pronunciation and
sense, but not their 'ancient' contents and contextual meaning.)

Although the poems had
been composed in the so-called 'written language' - and not in the colloquial
language commonly spoken at that time - the characters's sounding (not
corresponding with the pronounciation of modern chinese or mandarin) absolutely
played an important part: The poems not only were read silently, but very
often recited with low or loud voice. A cultured person, well-read, anyway
knowing them by heart, so was able to understand the poems just by listening.

According to their high
standing they now and then had been compared with Goethe and Schiller
(the great German poets), the unbridled-brilliant titanic mind of Li T'ai-po
possibly arousing still more fascination in the western world than in
China formed and influenced by Confucianism. To China the undemanding
and dignified largesse of Tu Fu seemed to be more appropriate, while the
person and the works of Li T'ai-po - next to high esteem - now and then
had to meet with reservation and criticism there. So Li T'ai-po's poetry
quite 'soon' has been translated into German, inter alia by Hans Bethge
around the turn of the century. Also Klabund took care of Li T'ai-po and
created very poetical free adaptations (for which he took the translations
done by others as a basis), their only drawback being, that they almost
had nothing in common with the T'ang-poet's work. First of all it's due
to the sinologist Prof. Günther Debon that the German readers interested
in ancient chinese poetry had been introduced into the world of ideas
of Li T'ai-po and Tu Fu (and many other important chinese poets from about
two thousand years) in an appropriate and respectful way. His anthologies'
expert translations, done by him in the second half of this century, are
both sensitive and artistic in a poetical sense and never lack his high
esteem toward the original (in some way, always as if shining through
the lines of the German version). In our opinion they rank among the most
beautiful and touching pieces of poetry in German language.